I thought it was going to be a rough time for both of us, but it wasn’t. I climbed up on the couch with my mate and snuggled next to him. My koala gave me full access to our eyes and ears. He wasn’t trying to be in control. He was trying to help.
We watched a marathon of an old vampire show I loved. I ate far too much eucalyptus, and then when it was time for bed, I climbed in beside Hari and fell asleep.
I’d been worried this would go on for days. I shouldn’t have been. I awoke in the middle of the night, my stomach squeezing. I went back and forth on whether I should wake my mate or not but ultimately decided to do so. He deserved to see every moment of this and would feel left out if I let him sleep.
It wasn’t comfortable, I wouldn’t say that it was, but it was manageable. My mate took out the book that we bought for theoccasion and started reading to me. We decided it would be better to have something planned out like that, where I could hear his voice and he wouldn’t feel like he needed to make up something, come up with affirmations, or accidentally ask questions I couldn’t answer, only causing increased stress on both sides.
As he read me the story of a man who accidentally crossed into the land of the Fae, I listened to the lull of his words and let my beast do what he needed to do. Our little one might’ve been tiny, but did I ever feel him coming out. Then, as the story went on, the human becoming a prince of the Fae, not realizing time was slipping away in his own land, our little one worked his way out and into the pouch. He was tiny. We could hardly see him, and it was hard not to help.
Once our little one completed their trek, my koala fell away, pouch nice and sealed. The red line was still there.
“He’s going to stay there for the rest of your pregnancy?”
“Yep. He won’t peek out like a joey. He just moved homes.”
“Can you go back to work and in public?”
“It’ll just look like any other baby belly unless I do a strip tease, and even then it would look like I had an accident and not that I had a pouch.”
“I vote the strip teases be reserved only for me.” He set the book down and crossed over to where I lay, helping me up. “Deal?”
“Deal, alpha mine. Deal.”
21
HARI
“I love what we've done.”
Remy and I were wandering hand in hand through the house. I hadn’t had time to make the bed, a dresser for the baby, a new desk for my mate, plus a crib. So in the end, Callum and Adrian did the first three items, and I kept the crib, the one that was most special, for me. I’d worked on it at night and weekends, and today everything had been delivered except for the crib. It had arrived, but I’d secreted it in the shed until the rest of the furniture, some of which we’d bought from other stores, had arrived and been put in place.
The bedding looked amazing, with Remy’s grandmother’s quilt, and he’d agreed that he wouldn’t pile cushions on the bed. I hated those damned things ‘cause every night at his original house, we tossed them off, and the following morning they had to go back on the bed. They were pointless.
The dresser in the nursery had been made to Remy’s specifications after talking to other dads online. The drawers were already full of folded baby clothes, and last night when mymate was asleep, I crept in here and pulled some out, marveling at how tiny they were.
“But we’re missing something.” Actually there were two somethings, but my mate wasn’t aware of the second. “Sit.” I put him in the nursery armchair. “Close your eyes and don’t peek until I say open.”
Callum and I had assembled the crib in the workshop, and I’d made it from white oak. The spindles were the correct distance apart to satisfy safety standards. I hadn't added a finish because babies liked to put things in their mouth and suck and gnaw on whatever was available. Instead, I’d coated the wood with a food-safe oil. I’d done three coats over one weekend, the same one when Remy had complained he hadn’t seen me since Friday, and let each one cure before adding the next.
I was glad the house was a bungalow or I would have needed help hefting it up the stairs.
“Don’t peek,” I told Remy in between grunting, cursing, and sweating buckets. I was regretting making this a surprise.
“Sounds painful.”
He was the one with shifter strength, but he was heavily pregnant and I wasn’t having my pregnant mate lifting heavy objects.
My plan had been to put the bedding on and attach the crib mobile, but I was exhausted, and also, Remy would probably like to add the finishing touches.
“Okay, now you can look.”
His eyes snapped open, and he hauled himself up. I should have helped him, but I was lying on the carpet panting.
Remy sniffed the wood as any wood connoisseur would do, just like he did that night we had dinner in the showroom. He ran his hands over the rails and the spindles.
“You made this, didn’t you?”
I had kept it a secret, though he could have guessed, as I kept putting off going shopping for a crib or saying I didn’t like the ones in the baby stores we’d visited.
